I kind of expected that with the no BWC news since this sort of falls under the same umbrella. Current PSN games are PS3 games.. and would require emulation to run on PS4.. which it won't have. We already knew this, technically.

The Engadget article that's quoted also doesn't say anything like having to to fully re-purchase content that you've already bought, as Joystiq seems to be suggesting with their headline. I would expect that once games you already have bought digitally show up on the PS4 cloud, then you'd be able to download them again either for free (which it should be) or the Nintendo Wii U VC route of charging something like 50 cents to a dollar to re-download.

Justify what? My comment about them charging a fee to re-download was speculation.. were you taking it as fact? Because no one has officially discussed costs in either of those articles. Yoshida has only said that they cannot carry over natively.

Ideally it would be free. BUT - if they charge a fee for it, I'm fine with that as I'm not going to re-buy that stuff anyway. Chances are when I get the PS4, the last thing I'm going to be worried about is whether or not I can download Dishonored on it since it'll already be on the console sitting right beside it. I'm not justifying it for everyone else.. but like I said in the chat last night.. bwc isn't a dealbreaker for me. I keep my old consoles and use them on the reg. I still have two brand new PS2s that function perfectly (JPN & USA). My most recent PS3 is fairly new (I just put in a 750gb hybrid drive two nights ago) and I'm hardly going to abandon that just because the PS4 comes out.

A press release reveals the machine will include an 8-core 64-bit x86 "Jaguar" CPU developed by AMD and a Radeon GPU with the capability of terrorizing televisions with 1.84 TFLOPS of gaming goodness.

PlayStation 4 includes a Blu-ray drive that spins game discs a brisk 6X and 8X for DVDs. Additional specs in the release note the, already revealed, 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM along with 802.11n WiFi capability, USB 3.0 ports, Bluetooth 2.1 and ports for optical audio, HDMI and even legacy analog AV hook-ups. Though the console will have internal storage, Sony did not detail its size.

The Apps

Quote from: Joystiq

With a new PlayStation app, Sony plans to extend the PlayStation 4 console experience to a second-screen. Announced for iOS and Android devices, the app will allow players to enhance their gaming experience by accessing information – such as maps for the PS4 title being played – as well as make purchases for their console on the go and "remotely watch other gamers playing on their devices."

Based on its description, the app seems similar in purpose as Microsoft's SmartGlass application; however, Sony's offerings expand further with the addition of updates to its PlayStation Vita. As revealed during its PlayStation 4 reveal event, the Vita will be able to remotely play console games with the use of Gaikai's streaming technology.

Despite Sony's business-wide emphasis on 3D technology in the last two two years, it chose to instead focus on 4K at CES this past January, making only brief mentions of the stereoscopic capabilities of its new products. Now, it seems that same philosophy is extending to the PlayStation 4. According to PlayStation Executive Shuhei Yoshida, the PlayStation 4 will support 4K video and photos, but 3D functionality will not be a focus.

"The PS4 supports 4K output, but only for photos and videos — not games," Yoshida said. "PS4 games do not work on 4K." While it's possible that we may see tech demos that demonstrate the system's capacity for 4K gaming, like Polyphony Digital's multi-display demos powered by several PS3s paired together, Yoshida says a single console cannot natively run games in the high-resolution format.

What's more, he said that stereoscopic 3D is not a focus for the new system, although it is 3D-capable.

"It's not a focus. But it does do it better. The basic capability is higher so more games will run at 1080p at 60 frames so it's an easier and better experience when you watch on 3D TV."

He went on to provide background about Sony's new strategy when it comes to 3D.

"3D was a big thing a couple of years ago — we made it a big thing because it was lead by the consumer electronics side of Sony and we liked what we could do on PS3 using 3D stereoscopic," Yoshida said. "But now the consumer electronics side of Sony, or all of the companies have shifted focus from 3D TV to something else, so if they're not talking about it, why would we?"

The PlayStation 4 does not need to be constantly connected to the internet, president of Sony Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer following Sony's conference yesterday. The PS4's internet settings are fully customizable, whether someone is concerned about data limits or simply wants to be left alone.

"Oh yes, yes, you can go offline totally," Yoshida said. "Social is big for us, but we understand there are some people who are anti-social. So if you don't want to connect to anyone else, you can do that."

The PS4 has a secondary custom chip that allows users to play games as those games are downloading, and Yoshida said the PS4 will have a low-power mode where the main system is asleep but the subsystem is awake, downloading or uploading content.

Players will be able to wake up the PS4 via tablets, smartphones or with the Vita, Yoshida further explained. The Vita will be able to play PS4 games remotely, with the goal of all games using remote play functionality.

PlayStation 4 game prices will run the gamut from one dollar to sixty, SCEA CEO Jack Tretton has revealed. "We're going to welcome free-to-play models, games from $.99 up to those $60 games," Tretton revealed in a CNBC interview.

Tretton also responded to the fact that we didn't actually get to see the PS4 during the unveiling event earlier this week, even though Sony told us all about the innards. Tretton says it was more important for Sony to show the concepts behind the system than to make a big deal out of the hardware itself - excluding the DualShock 4, obviously.

"You're going to see some of the greatest games ever created and the consumer is going to have more ease of use, the ability to sample games before they buy them and have more breadth of games than they've ever seen before," Tretton said of the PlayStation 4 during the segment. He also clarified that while Holiday 2013 is the official launch window for the PS4, "the promise is out for Holiday 2013, so pre-Christmas."

Sony has been pretty vague on the light bar's purpose thus far. Early speculation (on leaked prototype photos) placed the light bar as a replacement for a Move controller. Now, after witnessing Media Molecule's intriguing PS4 Move demo, we know that PlayStation Move is alive and well. So, where does that leave the light bar? According to Sony Worldwide Studios Prez Shuhei Yoshida, the light will change colors to identify players and signal various in-game happenings - for example, when your character takes damage. In addition, the new PlayStation Camera will use it to determine your controller's spatial position, and distance from the console, in three dimensions. Sound familiar?

Yes, the difference and dynamic between the DualShock 4's light bar and your PlayStation Move controller are far from clear, but several months stand between us and PS4's November release - I'm sure Sony will have plenty to share before then.

@IGN just reported PS4 will not block used game access. Hooray. Your move, Microsoft.

Sony's responses to questions about this have been getting more and more vague and onimous every time they're asked. That first quote looked like an absolute no, then they went with:

Quote

"That's my expectation, that PS4 games will work on the hardware. That's my expectation. Ummm ... yeah. We have to really name our system services to explain more about it."

And finally when asked if used games would require purchasing an activation code:

Quote

“It's a publisher decision. We are not talking about it. Sorry.”

So it seems like something is definitely up there.

Seems like they're angling for a best-of-both-worlds approach where the used game decision is at the publisher level. They can market their console to every publisher and when one inevitably makes the jump to no-used-games they can ignore the fact that their console allowing it is a major cause & point to "It'd be next-Xbox exclusive if we didn't have this option, and besides it's an option that they chose, it's really their fault".

Yup, I got $20 credit for spending $100 in October. The promo they are doing now is get $10 credit for every $50 you spend up until, I think, the first week of April. I am not sure what the limitations are though. There should be info on their site.

Also, making used game accessibility up the publishers is basically what the current policy is. As it stands now, games like Madden, if you buy used, EA requires you to buy an activation code if you want to play online, otherwise you can still play the game with all of the offline features w/o spending the extra cash.

So I just bought a new PS + year membership to take advantage of the extra 3 months. Does anyone know where to check that it has stacked like it should (my current PS + is supposed to run out in June).

Sweet, thanks it's all good. Was a bit confused as there's no real option inside the store or on the website (well what I could see anyway.)I also picked up the walking dead for just under $10, so I'm hoping the two purchases will stack and i'll get that $10 credit.

North Americans waiting for a PSP-playable localization of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment are going to have to wait a little bit longer. The Atlus JRPG, which came out on PSN this week as a $9.99 PSone classic, can be downloaded onto PS3, but not as yet onto Vita or PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment America says the game was intended to be compatible with Vita and PSP, and is now working on a fix to ensure it is. There's no exact ETA, although community manager Morgan Haro says "worst case scenario" is that it takes a few weeks.

Pssst, here's an open secret: Sony's PlayStation 3 was a machine built on ego that had harsh executive-level repercussions following launch. For the recently revealed PlayStation 4, which Sony has been developing for several years, the company took a more democratic approach, consulting with developers and publishers on what it should do.

"We've been very closely involved in the development of the machine," said Hermen Hulst, co-founder of Killzone developer Guerrilla Games, to The Guardian. "It's no longer designed in an ivory tower somewhere in Tokyo, it's shared with us, with [Uncharted developer] Naughty Dog, with Sony San Diego – and together we've built the machine."

The Guardian posits developer consultation and discussions with publishers like Ubisoft led to the PS4 being designed in line with modern PCs, so devs could easily comprehend the hardware. Other design elements noted were greater social integration and controller elements, like concave triggers and the headphone jack.

Sony announced its second sale of major offices in as many months today, the company offloading its Tokyo-based Sony City Osaki building for ¥111 billion (around $1.2 billion). Following last month's sale of its US headquarters for $1.1 billion, Sony entered the Osaki building and its premises into a trust, then sold the trust's beneficiary rights to Nippon Building Fund inc. and an unnamed "Japanese institutional investor" in a 60/40 split.

Sony stated the sale was part of the company's reorganization of assets to "strengthen its corporate structure." Then again, the ¥41 billion (around $4.4 billion) raised in operating income by the sale and how it'll help Sony turn an operating profit this fiscal year helps too. The company wants to bring an end to four successive years of losses, including last fiscal year's loss of around $820 million, not to mention the humiliation of Fitch Ratings cutting the company's credit rating to junk status.

While the sale represents another major shift for the company in a year of nothing but, Sony and other Sony Group businesses are to remain in the City Osaki building for five further years under a separate lease agreement.

Okay, I also noticed that "Henry Bayle"'s PSN name is DayZ100. Imagine if that was some easter egg to hint at DayZ coming out for PS4... I know I'm reaching and it's more than likely nothing, but hey.. a guy can hope, right?

Apparently there's an arbitrary limit of 4,000 songs on a vita memorable card. It took a year for people to notice because who the fuck uses a vita as your main mp3 player, but it's still really dumb and arbitrary. Tech support first told the guy there was no limit, then when proven wrong told him to buy another card for his remaining music, despite the fact there was plenty of room on the card for more.

Some untranslated PSOne imports are hitting the PSN tomorrow. Tek may be interested in these..

Quote from: Joystiq

Looking for a new challenge from an old game? Gungho Online Entertainment has a new batch of PSOne Imports this week, which includes Sentimental Graffiti, a dating game that is, as far as we know, untranslated. Do you dare attempt to scale the walls of Japanese text?

You can also try your kanji dictionary skills with RPGs First Queen IV, Rung Rung: Oz no Mahou Tsukai, and Favorite Dear: Enkan no Monogatari. For a full-on language and culture shock, here's a mahjong game, Mahjong Uranai Fortuna: Tukino Megamitachi. Or a more familiar (but still Japanese) card game, Trump Shiyouyo!

I'm having an issue where my PS3 freezes right before the home screen loads. The system boots up, logo appears, and the safety warning appears, but right before it gets to the menus, it freezes at this exact moment every time:

Looking up the issue online, the solution that comes up the most is to shut it off, hold your finger on the power button until it beeps twice, which leads to the Safe Mode menu, where you choose option 3 to 'Restore File System'. I've tried this a few times, and it's not fixing the issue. Has anyone else run into this or have another solution?

This issue seriously came out of nowhere, too. Never had a problem, and minutes before it happened, I was watching a DVD, playing a game, before I quit to change the network settings to a wired ethernet connection, where it froze during the connection test.

When I had a "freezing in the xmb" issue it turned out my hdd had essentially crashed - parts of it where the os was installed were corrupt. The only fix was to either remove it and do a complete wipe or to get a completely new hdd. Unfortunately both result in complete loss of data.

Sony detailed a bit more in regards to the PS4's UI today at GDC. For starters, the Xross Media Bar of the PS3 and the LiveArea UI of the Vita stay on those systems. The new UI for the PS4 "goes in new directions", said Chris Norden, Senior Staff Engineer at Sony.

Mockups of the new UI were to shown to give people an idea of the new interface. Up-to-date information is to be shown for all games, including DLC, videos, friend recommendations, social links and more.

The Friend system has been improved greatly over PS3, said Norden. As a side note, the social network features the use of true names. A player has two identities on the PS4 -- your user name and your true name. The true name will not be shown by default, but will be visible to those linked via Facebook or other trusted methods. Otherwise, you'll have to mutually agree to show true names (think Google and YouTube).

Here's some good news: the cap on the friends list has increased for PS4 over PS3, though no specific numbers were given.

So how about that Share button? Well, "Share" on the PS4 controller uses the system's hardware encoder, which is always recording the last several minutes of gameplay without using any additional system resources An example of a Share menu shows off the fact that you can upload a video to YouTube or Facebook easily -- background uploads can take place after you add a comment.

A new spectating feature lets you stream video of live gameplay, but you can also watch other people play. This is all built into the PS4 hardware, so no work is needed from developers. Users can type comments in real time, and developers can implement those comments via an API in their game.

Remote Play lets you connect your PS Vita to your PS4 via a local network or internet -- the screens are mirrored this time, unlike the PS3 and PSP. No system resources need to be allocated to Remote Play -- it's all built in. Remote Play can be started at any time, and Sony stated that they used code from Gaikai to make this feature work.

For the buttons that the Vita is missing from the PS4 controller, mapping will be supported. Multi-user support is important for the PS4, which is a vast improvement over the PS3. Multiple players can log in, earn trophies and more, just like LittleBigPlanet (finally!).

"Play during download" is a key feature of PS4 for digital games, so you don't have to wait hours to play a hot new release -- immediate play is the goal. The game data will be split into multiple chunks and will enable the player to start when the minimum amount of data has been pulled down to the hard disk. Developers will be encouraged to create this minimum package to start players off.

Finally, an official PlayStation App will come to the Android and iPhone platforms. The app will also work as a second screen for PS4 games (Smartglass?!).

I really love the play during download feature. So many PC games have been doing this for the last little while and it's great to see a console hopping on it.